


A Sunless World

by Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)



Series: Clockie's Meta [23]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Analysis, Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Gen, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss
Summary: "I’ve been thinking more about my theory that the world in Hollow Knight is actually just all wasteland, whose habitable zones are caused exclusively by Higher Beings of some form or another."
Series: Clockie's Meta [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223
Kudos: 11





	A Sunless World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).



I’ve been thinking more about my theory that the world in Hollow Knight is actually just all wasteland, whose habitable zones are caused exclusively by Higher Beings of some form or another.

First, it’d actually explain the bugs- everything we see in Hollow Knight has a pretty hard cap upper size limit, with things getting significantly rarer the bigger they get. Deepnest is positively awash in tiny bugs and spiders, lumaflies are predominant throughout the kingdom, but comparatively, in the entire game, Bardoon is the largest NPC and he’s pretty much participating alone in his size category. 

Judging by his shed carcass, the original form of the Pale King was the only thing that pushed that further- but the overwhelming trend seems to suggest that the world of Hollow Knight is a world limited by lack of some crucial resource.

Godseeker calls Hallownest a land “rich in gods” the way a potential settler might talk about water-rich land. And the Godseekers in question, we know, lost their gods, implicitly to death (the main one talks up how the gods of Hallownest will “never die”) and this seems to have been a traumatic event that called for multiple desperate measures to survive it. The mask we see from “a godless land” is battered, worn, and seems instrumental to the peculiar means of survival the Godseekers settled on, reducing their body count to just one by preserving all others inside the dream of their strongest and most able to travel.

There’s really not a lot of flora in Hallownest- mostly just the curling, white-glowing mushrooms and patches of grass, and the whispering roots that seem more a magical growth than a true plant. The two most verdant areas in the game are Greenpath and the Queen’s Garden, and they have something in common- both are extremely close to living gods. In the White Lady’s case, we even see her roots twine through the the cave around her. 

I’ve seen people air the theory that White Lady resembles a fungus that might have a symbiotic relationship with plant life, and her Garden is thus able to flourish specifically by coexisting with her mycelium in the soil. Calling it a “garden” does imply that someone tended it and installed these plants.

And in Greenpath, tablets mention both that Greenpath became this way because “the greater mind once dreamed of leaf and cast these caverns so”, and also, a plea to Unn that sounds quite a bit like the Godseekers’ lament:

> _Hidden Unn, we need you now.  
> _
> 
> _We grow tired away from you._
> 
> _Our leaves are falling._

Unn is also, according to the Godseeker, a god losing her power. This is interesting because if you compare Unn to basically all of the other higher beings? All of the others _glow_. Unn doesn’t. Her prodigious size and the way that she is able to call to others seems to suggest that. Based on the acid- seemingly her creation, as she’s located squarely in the largest deposit of it- her glow would be a pale green, but she has misty, shiny eyes like the White Lady and her body is dark.

Comparatively, Deepnest- who is stated to have kept Hallownest and its king at arm’s length? Is the darkest environment in the game and full of _a lot_ of highly opportunistic predators. Even the self-aware and uninfected beasts seem much freer with eating sapient bugs than anyone else in Hallownest- Willoh’s unfortunate lunch and the nature of the trap in the Beast’s Den seem to operate in a framework that assumes you will _not_ be eaten by someone you can hold a conversation with. Which makes sense, since the bug / beast divide seems to be the separation between insects and arachnids, the latter of which eats the former _all the time_ in the insect world.

Midwife’s comment about “the most intelligent species” could even suggest some cognitive lines drawn around it- “but of course, we aren’t _cannibals_ , here- we only eat _lesser_ people.”

But to me, the most damning indicator of this is…

 _Hallownest doesn’t have a sun_.

Precious little of the world takes place under the open sky, but the sky over the Howling Cliffs and over Dirtmouth is unfailingly the same dull twilight color, with swirling clouds, even drifting snow. The Pale King claims that the wastes will cause people to lose their mind, but there seems no indication of that- people pass through the wastes all the time in both directions. What seems more accurate is that the wastes are vast, and seemingly, dark and with almost nothing to stop the wind, so that the cliffs that shelter Dirtmouth are described as, well, howling with the sound of the wind.

Even those as adventurous as Quirrel find this wind and sky disturbing- if dreamnailed in the Crystal Peak:

> _…These winds cry lonely. Better the comfort of rock above one’s head._

But if there’s no sun at all, then, there’s a good question of how anything lives at all- especially plants, that need light.

Of course, you wouldn’t need a sun, if you had something else providing light for you, right? Something like the luminous, shining Higher Beings?

But the system isn’t perfect. Higher Beings can fade. Their worshipers can outlive them- hence the Godseeker, desperately wandering in search of a new sun. And even if they live, the habitable zones around them are much smaller than a sun warming an entire planet. It’s likely that the only reason Grimm’s Troupe can travel so easily is because of the protection of their divine troupe master making it easier to brave the wastes by casting his habitable zone around him. After all, at least according to his ultimate dream nail fight, only half of Grimm is in his body- the nightmare heart remains, beating serenely in the very fabric of the main tent. The macabre “sun” of the troupe’s cloth sky.

Sure, you might say, but, the Shade Lord doesn’t seem to give off any light- logically they couldn’t preserve or nurture as the Radiance they usurped did.

Thing is- there’s life that lives in sunless places.

Clustered around thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean.

The Abyss is characterized as an eldritch sea; the Shade Lord wouldn’t need to be bright, if they are instead warm, and able to radiate elements needed for life. But the habitable field they, and seemingly their predecessor the Blackwyrm, radiated would be pretty _peculiar_ , by the standards of what lay above them.

But this would also dovetail beautifully with HK’s motif of ‘creepy crawlies’- parasitism and symbiosis are basically facts of the world of small animals- while it’s hedged in a lot of rhetoric of divinity and royalty, Hallownest’s hierarchy seems in many ways bound by the trappings of ecosystem more than sociology.

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis originally found here:  
> <https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/183818579645/hollow-knight-a-sunless-world>


End file.
